


always winter but never christmas

by 8sword



Category: Supernatural
Genre: 9x13, Alice in Wonderland References, C.S. Lewis - Freeform, Episode: s09e13 The Purge, Gen, Harry Potter References, Hurt Dean Winchester, Lord of the Rings references, Narnia References, Pinocchio references, coda fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-07
Updated: 2014-02-07
Packaged: 2018-01-11 11:14:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,579
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1172385
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/8sword/pseuds/8sword
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The question now is, is he Lucy or is he Edmund? Except it’s really no question at all. Dean’s only ever fucked things up, so he waits for the White Witch to find him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	always winter but never christmas

**Author's Note:**

> The first (recent) Narnia movie came out in 2005, at which point Dean and Sam were already reunited in the show. Please ignore that fact for the duration of this ficlet. Yaki-imo is Japanese for a roasted sweet potato.

 

                There's a wardrobe in Dean's room.

                He's not sure if it's always been there or if it's only just appeared, he's drinking and his eyes are a little blurry and he can't remember, anymore, if he still has the hoodie, cold Nebraska rain and fierce Sammy eyes under floppy Sammy hair _I'm not gonna let you die, period._ He can't find it, it's not in the wardrobe, maybe Sam took it, maybe he found it and took it back 'cause it was always his to begin with.

                It's dark inside the wardrobe, dark and cold, and with a wet kind of laugh Dean's crawling into it, under the shirts and coats hanging inside, and he's thinking of his poor son of a bitch granddad falling into that motel room, _I'm from Normal, Illinois_ , what the fuck, how was that even their lives and Dean's laughing harder now, lungs too tight to breathe almost, and his face is hot and wet.

                Then there's something icy-cold against his face and he's blinking because he's not in a wardrobe, he's next to a lamppost; he's on a snowdrift that's seeping through the ass of his jeans. He's seen this movie before, saw it while Sammy was at Stanford because when it came out he remembered how fucking much his brother loved the books and it was enough to peel the ten dollar bill out of his wallet, to sneak him into the back row of the big theatre, lonely guy sitting in the corner smelling of gun oil and nuked gas station food. Staring straight ahead at the screen with its commercials for dentures and x-ray tech training so he wouldn't meet the curious eyes that fell on him and his too-big coat, the bruise purpling his eye. He kept his phone on vibrate through the whole thing, kept it inside his coat pocket with his hand cupped over it so he wouldn't miss the buzz if Dad called, if Dad needed him, but no one called, no one needed him, and when the movie was done, when people were chattering in excitement to each other about how good it had been and streaming out of the theatre, he pushed his hands into his jeans pockets instead and fell into step with a group of college kids who were arguing over whether to go to IHOP or Denny's for dinner, walked alongside like he was one of them.

                He leans back, one hand sinking numb and cold into the snow, and drains the rest of his Coors. Presses his tongue against the roof of his mouth to press the taste into it. He stares up at the hazy glow of the lamp because the question now is, is he Lucy or is he Edmund? Except it's really no question at all. Dean's only ever fucked things up, and so he waits for the White Queen to find him.

                It's a while later that the sleigh bells come, and a while later that he blinks, looking up, raising his forehead from his knees.

                "Dean!" comes the voice. It's Charlie, and he squints at her.

                "Let me guess--what am I doing here?" She jumps down off the sleigh, grabs him by the shoulder. Tries to haul him up as Dean shakes his head, slow and heavy like a whole snow bank's accumulated on it and he's trying to thaw. "Funny story! Uh--literally, I guess--I mean, would you believe I got here from Oz?" One story leads to another, she says, you can find your way into one if you understand the other well enough to find the spaces they're the same, if you just open your mind, crossover potential, Dean, don't you see, she's telling him, but all he's thinking is that they're all really the same story when you come down to it. Sam dies and Dean's not good enough, Cas leaves because Dean's not good enough, Dean goes to Hell because he's bad enough. He's relived them so many times, the same fights, the same hurts. Even the lines are the same now, marbles he's turned over in his mouth before, hard and worn smooth, too smooth, no catch. Nothing that sticks. _We're family. We split the crappiness. You and me--fighting the good fight together._ Marbles, rolling across empty floor.

                He says, "Where's my Turkish Delight?"

                Charlie laughs. Shoulders him into the sleigh and piles furs on top of him. She says something about cotton candy, but Dean doesn't quite hear it; his eyes are falling shut, his toes curling inside his boots, and the last thing he hears is her starting to warble about going to the mailbox.

 

\- o -

               

                When he comes to, he's on a throne. Legs slung over the arm like it's a couch, and there's armor clasped around his chest, the backs of his knees, the insides of his elbows. It's strangely comfortable, and he turns his head to rest his chin against the breastplate and squint through the sunlight falling into the throne room.

                A beaver blinks back at him. Its nose wiggles. It's close enough its whiskers wobble against his chin.

                "Dude," Dean says. "Personal space."

                "My apologies, Son of Mary," the beaver says, and shuffles a step back.

                "Winchester."

                Dean looks up. Dorothy's marching down a red carpet toward him. She's got armor on. Charlie, next to her, is rocking Gandalf robes. And a staff. She winks at him.

                "Are you ready?"

                "For what?" Dean says stupidly.

                "Christmas," Dorothy says, and takes an object the beaver hands her. "Thank you."

                Dean pushes up in his throne. "Is that--"

                Dorothy takes a bite, holds it up. There is orange smeared around her mouth as she chews. " _Yaki-imo_. You want one?"

                Dean thinks of roofies. Thinks he might be high.

                "Is this real?" he asks Charlie.

                Charlie's got a long gray beard. "What do you mean?"

                "I mean is all this--" He flaps his hand around, "for real? Or just in my head?"

                "Of course it's in your head, Harry," Charlie says. "But why on earth should that mean that it's not real?"

                Dean stares at her. Charlie fastens rabbit ears to his head and a pocketwatch to his belt loop. Then his hand is in hers and they're skipping into the forest.

                Crowley lounges on a branch, tail moving lazily. _Trust me, I tried_. His grin is a wormy white thing in the darkness, brighter as he disappears around it, and then the white's darkening to red, a burning slash, Cain's mark glowing in the air. Dean stares and it becomes an eye, becomes something roaring into him, and there's a ring on his finger, there's something squeezing him until he thinks his lungs are going to squeeze-slither out of his throat to plop onto the ground. _Squish, squish,_ lumps of fat, lumps of animal, lumps of him, choking them out of him like pieces of poison, but they're _him_ , he's poison; and Sam recoils from them when they land on the ground between them, slimy and sick.

                _Good. 'Cause I was just being honest._

                Then Dean's a human tablet, and Kevin's in front of him, squinting through big thick spectacles like Geppetto. Dean is flayed open, the flaps of his chest parted like the pages of a book, and Kevin's reading the Enochian etched onto his ribs as his eyes burn, smolder and crackle like Cain's Mark.

                _I carved you into a new animal_ , Kevin says, and then he's looking up at Dean, his solemn look becoming a grin becoming Alastair becoming _Daddy's little girl, he broke in thirty._

                A blue light the blue fairy _Cas Cas Cas_ , but Dean's cries are coming out brays, donkey sounds, he's an ass and Cas is alighting on the ground and tilting his head at him, puzzled, furrow-browed, what could a filthy animal have to say to an angel?

                The light's fading, the gauzy glowing fairy wings, too, and Dean's scrambling backward, backward into dirt and dark, _you did it for you--_

                _Wow. When Dean Winchester asks for a favor, he's not screwin' around._

                "Son of Adam?"

                "Brother of Adam," Dean mutters, wretchedly, and rolls onto his side. It's cold again, he's whole again, still doesn't feel quite human. Hooves in front of his nose, two, dark brown against the white snow, and then there's a warm hand under his elbow, helping him up, easy there, brother, I got you.

                "Benny?" Dean mumbles.

                A whistle is the only reply. Familiar and faint. Dean struggles to open his eyes, struggles to follow it, but already it's fading in his ears, the cold seeping away from his ass, his ears, and when he opens his eyes, he's inside the wardrobe. His face is crammed against a pair of jeans he hasn't fit in in years, and Benny's not here. Nor is Charlie, or Dorothy, and his mouth does not taste like Turkish Delight.

                His face is wet. His face is clean.

                He stumbles out of the wardrobe. Stumbles into his bed.

 

 

 

 

_I hope no one who reads this book has been quite as miserable as Susan and Lucy were that night; but if you have been -- if you've been up all night and cried till you have no tears left in you -- you will know that there comes in the end a sort of quietness._

_You feel as if nothing is ever going to happen again._

\-- C.S. Lewis, _The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe_

 


End file.
